“Science and religion stand watch over different aspects of all our major flashpoints. May they do so in peace and reinforcement--and not… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
If there is any consistent enemy of science, it is not religion, but irrationalism. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Odd arrangements and funny solutions are the proof of evolution - paths that a sensible God would never tread but that a… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
[Evolution is] one of the best documented, most compelling and exciting concepts in all of science. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
No rational order of divine intelligence unites species. The natural ties are genealogical along contingent pathways of history. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
But we all recognise the primary foible of frail humanity - our propensity for embracing hope and shunning logic, our tendency to… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The argument that the literal story of Genesis can qualify as science collapses on three major grounds: the creationists' need to invoke… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The fundamentalists, by 'knowing' the answers before they start, and then forcing nature into the straitjacket of their discredited preconceptions, lie outside… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Our creationist detractors charge that evolution is an unproved and unprovable charade — a secular religion masquerading as science. They claim, above… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
I am not, personally, a believer or a religious man in any sense of institutional commitment or practice. But I have a… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Evolution has encountered no intellectual trouble; no new arguments have been offered. Creationism is a home-grown phenomenon of American sociocultural history-a splinter… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists-whether through design or… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
As in 1925, creationists are not battling for religion. They have been disowned by leading church men of all persuasions, for they… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The spirit of Plato dies hard. We have been unable to escape the philosophical tradition that what we can see and measure… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The enemy of knowledge and science is irrationalism, not religion — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Creation science has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple and so basic that we often forget to mention it:… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The invalid assumption that correlation implies cause is probably among the two or three most serious and common errors of human reasoning. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Our creationist detractors charge that evolution is an unproved and unprovable charade-a secular religion masquerading as science. They claim, above all, that… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures;… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
I strongly reject any conceptual scheme that places our options on a line, and holds that the only alternative to a pair of extreme… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
History employs evolution to structure biological events in time. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
In his anti-Darwinian book... (and eponymously named The Neck of the Giraffe ), Francis Hitching tells the story... "The need to survive by reaching… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
... many folks take them seriously because they just 'know' that evolution can never be seen in the immediate here and now. In fact,… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Charles Darwin viewed the fossil record more as an embarrassment than as an aid to his theory ... — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
Zoocentrism is the primary fallacy of human sociobiology, for this view of human behavior rests on the argument that if the actions of "lower"… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The world, unfortunately, rarely matches our hopes and consistently refuses to behave in a reasonable manner. — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The true beauty of nature is her amplitude; she exists neither for nor because of us, and possesses a staying power that all our… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
With copious evidence ranging from Plato's haughtiness to Beethoven's tirades, we may conclude that the most brilliant people of history tend to be a… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
When scientists need to explain difficult points of theory, illustration by hypothetical example - rather than by total abstraction - works well (perhaps indispensably)… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
The truly awesome intellectuals in our history have not merely made discoveries; they have woven variegated, but firm, tapestries of comprehensive coverage. The tapestries… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image
I believe that we can still have a genre of scientific books suitable for and accessible alike to professionals and interested laypeople. The concepts… — Stephen Jay Gould Copy Share Image